But I'm having second thoughts...
The history of my relationship with my mother is tumultuous at best. There are too many background details to list; most significant is regarding college and the consequences. Also, by her own admission, my mother was a helicopter parent and was very overprotective.
My mother is the one, along with her boyfriend at the time (they broke up a few years ago), who forced me into college. On top of that, she set aside nothing to help with my college tuition over the course of my entire pre-adult life, instead choosing to blame my father (they divorced when I was 7 and he didn't help with my college tuition either).
She had close to a six-figure income for several years during my elementary school years, and we lived in a modest apartment; she could have easily set aside some college money on her own, especially considering my going to college was her dream, which she forced on to me.
When I was in high school, people asked me why I didn't get a job. I always responded that I didn't need one; in reality, I was strongly discouraged from getting one.
When I was 17, I started working as a private tutor (mostly honors chemistry) to start gaining some of my own work experience. I had about a 3.0 GPA and was praised by the parents of a couple of the students I tutored.
My mother and her boyfriend strongly criticized me for tutoring, because I "didn't have the grades." Needless to say, I abruptly became unemployed again. To them, it was all about the grades; work experience was seen as a distraction.
When I was 18, after my first quarter of college, I told my mother I wanted to quit; I didn't get far in explaining myself before she started bawling in tears about how her dream was ruined, and her boyfriend blasted me with criticism about how I was destined to be a second-class citizen. I was so humiliated and scared that I reluctantly went through with the rest of college.
Flash forward to present:
I am 26, yet my mother treats me like a child to this day. I have dedicated much of my time to helping out around the house and helping her with various tasks related to her business ventures (research, typing up documents, organizing ideas into messages with clarity, etc.), yet she always finds a reason to be angry with me.
One morning, she woke me up demanding to know where a 2 loofer was (it fell in the backseat of the car; I retrieved it without a word). This morning, she woke me up asking where her favorite coffee cup was (she left it in the microwave).
The thing is, she has been like this since before she was 40 (she is now 56); to me, attributing it to hormones is just an excuse on her end, especially since she has bio-identical hormone replacement at her disposal.
Also today, she blasted me when she found out that I did not go through with accepting General Relief (from the County); she accused me of sabotaging her.
Even though work is picking up for us and she has given me a lot of credit for helping her, she insists that we "need" money from the County, which to me is a drop in the bucket compared to the work with Barbizon and a private investigation firm she recently secured, and I have the skills to be of great help to her with all her work; she considers me her assistant and has been paying me for helping her out.
She likes to dream big and talk about never settling, yet she "needs" a few hundred dollars a month from the County? It makes no sense to me.
She wants to start a foundation to empower foster teens and has promised that I'll be getting paid for my involvement, but I feel like this is merely continuing a years-long pattern of co-dependency in a toxic relationship.
I have tried to politely reason with her on many occasions; the typical response is to blast me with more criticism ("THAT'S NOT NICE, YOU DON'T LISTEN, YOU'D BETTER CHANGE YOUR ATTITUDE, YOU ALWAYS FIGHT ME ON EVERYTHING," etc.)
So even though I technically have work, it emotionally feels like I'm still unemployed. And so, my job search continues.
"RESUMES FOR DUMMIES, COVER LETTERS FOR DUMMIES," and "JOB INTERVIEWS FOR DUMMIES" are my selected books for revising my job search tools to increase my chances of job-hunting success. I didn't know much of what they teach when I was job-hunting in the past; I never succeeded with getting a job.
A neighbor of ours also has a possible job opening for me and has praised me for my organizational skills; I plan to follow up with her later today.
In the meantime, my strategy for dealing with my mother is to keep my distance; she can let me know if she needs anything work-related.
Why am I living with her and focusing so much on helping her out? Because it's the most effective way I've found thus far to get paid for helping others so that I can rebuild my own trashed financial situation.
Plus, a part of me still holds on to the belief that a healthy relationship with my mother is somehow salvageable.
But maybe I should just walk away from it all and start over on my own (I would need to succeed in my job search first)...
What are your thoughts regarding this relationship dynamic? What would you do if you were in my situation?
As always, feel free to ask any questions that you deem helpful for clarification.
P.S. I've read several other threads in this forum where the book "TOXIC PARENTS" by Dr. Susan Forward was recommended; it sounds interesting to me, but I feel like my focus should be on the aforementioned three job search-related books.
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